Guessing the fate of former president Donald Trump, given legal woes stretching from lawsuits and a criminal indictment to a civil suit over rape allegations and two Justice Department investigations, is little more than a parlor game. However, Trump’s capturing the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination — as appears more likely with each passing day — will lead to a dead certainty: Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, will be his time of reckoning with the American people. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
If ever a former president needed to face a day of judgment for his actions and their damaging consequences .it is Trump.His ruinous misdeeds are his alone.
Last year, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a staggering step that erased a fundamental right to abortion established more than 50 years ago. Roe’s demise set in motion state antiabortion legislation and orders that will cut off or severely limit access to the procedure. As Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said in their joint dissent, the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization essentially declared that from the moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. “As of today,” they said, “a State can always force a woman to give birth, prohibiting even the earliest abortions. A State can thus transform what, when freely undertaken, is a wonder into what, when forced, may be a nightmare.”
Trump’s three nominations were no accident. As a presidential candidate, he pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe. In Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, Trump got exactly what he sought.
It should come as no surprise that Trump also nominated Matthew Kacsmaryk, the Texas-based federal judge who, rooted in antiabortion zealotry and untethered to sound legal reasoning, shot down the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. Kacsmaryk’s anti-FDA decision is under appeal, along with his ruling against sending abortion medications by mail or other delivery service under the terms of an 1873 anti-vice law. But women now find themselves confronted with yet another potentially devastating situation because of Trump.
The former president, and all candidates on the ballot who agree with his repudiation of a woman’s constitutional right, deserves an Election Day 2024 reckoning.That day could also be a moment of consequences for a nation still coming to grips with the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection sought to halt the certification of the result of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost. Repercussions are still unfolding from the Capitol breach that occurred with a shocked nation — and world — looking on. More than 1,000 people have been charged by U.S. prosecutors. Nearly 600 have pleaded guilty. That number will climb.
It should come as no surprise that Trump also nominated Matthew Kacsmaryk, the Texas-based federal judge who, rooted in antiabortion zealotry and untethered to sound legal reasoning, shot down the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. Kacsmaryk’s anti-FDA decision is under appeal, along with his ruling against sending abortion medications by mail or other delivery service under the terms of an 1873 anti-vice law. But women now find themselves confronted with yet another potentially devastating situation because of Trump.The former president, and all candidates on the ballot who agree with his repudiation of a woman’s constitutional right, deserves an Election Day 2024 reckoning.That day could also be a moment of consequences for a nation still coming to grips with the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection sought to halt the certification of the result of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost.
Repercussions are still unfolding from the Capitol breach that occurred with a shocked nation and world looking on. More than 1,000 people have been charged by U.S. prosecutors. Nearly 600 have pleaded guilty. That number will climb.
But accountability has never been properly placed. Yes, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) did explicitly point at Trump for helping spur the attack. Said McConnell on the Senate floor: “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”Yes, we also know that Trump riled up his supporters with false voter-fraud claims.
These were dangerous lies that he keeps telling. But the consequences of Trump’s instigation were greater than the storming of a national shrine.It was, as the Anti-Defamation League observed, “an inflection point for extremism in America.” Jan. 6 was one of those rare moments in U.S. history when virulent extremism, hate and disinformation converged to produce a toxicity that continues to spread through our body politic.
Credit Trump with spawning those democracy-threatening moments — threats that continue to this day.The courts and the wheels of justice might have their say with respect to the once-defeated former president.But if Donald Trump makes it to Election Day 2024, that will be a providential occasion for the nation to call him to account for all he has done — and continues to do — to undermine democratic values of freedom, fairness, equality and self-determination. That day can’t come soon enough.
